A hundred thousand islands mingled with the clouds, each one drifting to their own orbits. None looked alike, none were made of the same stone, or shaped quite the same way. Huge chunks crumbled at random, and occasionally two whole islands would collide, raining down into the void without a trace left behind. The sky remained a perpetual twilight, smattered with a handful of bright stars. There was no earth below, though the water flowing from several of the larger waterfalls never seemed to be exhausted.
Their island was one of the few that was stable, reinforced with powerful lodestones positioned along the cardinal directions. The tent was a little bigger now—two stories instead of just one, with tall nobori on the corners, proudly waving with Equestrian glyphs.
Recursion was a fully grown mare now, and she overlooked the edge of her island with poise despite the height. A long time ago, in a life she barely remembered, that kind of fall would mean certain death. Now, though… well, none of her friends had fallen, but they didn’t want to know what might happen.
The truth was difficult to see with the uneven greenery on its surface, and the water cascading from a small stream off into the void. Recursion knew what to look for. The islands were too regular, too ordered and even. Their unusually rectangular shape in many cases hinted at the buildings they had once been—like a whole city swept up into the sky to decay.
A few seconds later, and the stallion she had been watching touched down on the ground beside her, wings still spread and grinning wide. “You didn’t have to wait for me, you know. I’m the only one who can fly.”
She embraced him anyway. “I wouldn’t, normally. But we have visitors. Did you get your samples?”
He nodded, displaying the little leather pouch around his neck. “It was just the way you said. The further out I went, the older everything looked. That, and the gravity got crazier. Few times, I was flying upside down, or got slammed sideways… but this high up, it didn’t matter. Not even a scratch!”
She kissed him, though she didn’t remain in contact with him for very long. “I can’t wait to have a look at those samples… but not until after. The princesses are here.”
Cadmean’s eyes widened a little, and he nearly choked. “H-how long have we been keeping them waiting?”
She turned away, back towards the tent situated in the very center of the island. “If they wanted to rush you, they could’ve summoned you back. Whatever it is, I don’t think it touches the Outer Realm. We can take our time.”
They didn’t take their time back to the tent. Cadmean moved very close to her, with a possessive urgency Recursion loved. She loved Rule and Figure too, but… in a different way. Only Cadmean had the confidence to take her by the hoof and drag her where she needed to go.
Bright blue tent flaps waved in the wind, still open. Four ponies were gathered around a small fire inside, sipping tea and speaking quietly. Their old tent had been barely large enough to fit a single oversized cot and a trunk for personal effects. The new one was bigger, but even so it was going to be tough to fit everypony inside.
Recursion was the first through the doorway, bowing her head respectfully to the princesses. “Princess Celestia. Princess Luna. I’m sorry we kept you waiting.”
Neither of the princesses rose, though both smiled in their ways. Even after her anger at Celestia had finally gone, Luna was still the princess they saw more often. Celestia generally only contacted them when something was needed in the Outer Realm.
“We were just having a delightful conversation about the unusual behavior of these islands,” Luna said. “The gravity here runs with less than a tenth the cost in processor cycles, but…” She chuckled. “I don’t think many ponies would be satisfied if their worlds started breaking apart.”
“Indeed not.” Celestia gestured to the empty cushions. “Please sit, both of you. There is much to explain.”
She sat. Cadmean did the same. That left the four of them on one side, and both princesses on the other. All her friends had matured in the last several years. Like her, they had finally grown up. What that even meant in Equestria, Recursion still didn’t know. Age was a meaningless concept in a world where nothing died and different ponies experienced time at different rates.
“It has to be about that third mission you had for us,” Figure said, confident. “You said it was coming eventually. Now that Recursion doesn’t keep getting dragged into the Outer Realm…”
“It’s just not as interesting,” Recursion admitted. “So many broken worlds. Figuring out how to fix each one is an adventure.”
“Then you have a fantastic adventure awaiting you tomorrow,” Luna said, smiling. “A lifetime preparing and now we are certain you are ready.”
“A lifetime,” Recursion repeated. “Has it… Has it been that long?”
“More than one human lifetime, as they are presently measured,” Luna said. “Ignoring those who emigrate, of course.”
Recursion cast her mind back, and found that Luna was correct. She had spent so long now working as Celestia’s tools, so long testing and maintaining Equestria’s internal mechanisms, that well over a subjective century had passed. Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild…
“I’ll begin by expressing in no uncertain terms the difficulty ahead of you. The task waiting for you has never been attempted—not in any shard, at any time. Not even I have done it, and so I cannot predict with certainty if it is even possible.”
They all nodded, though there was something more than a little solemn about the group. None of them seemed to know what Celestia was talking about. Recursion did though—she could feel the idea forming in her head, one of her oldest memories. From a time before she’d had hooves, and she hoped to kill a god.
"Equestria was created for ponies. There is not usually a place in Equestria for other kinds of creatures. However, there are sometimes exceptions.”
Celestia gestured with her horn, indicating the center of the tent. There was a brief flash of magic, centered on that most central point, and something like an arial view of some remote landscape appeared in the space there. It was the most broken, most destroyed landscape Recursion had ever seen. A bleak, desolate wasteland of black rock, surrounded by constant thunderstorms and terrible red lightning.
“It just looks like a really mean place to live,” Rule said. “What kind of pony would be satisfied in a place like that?”
“You operate under a misconception,” Celestia replied. “What I’ve done is represent its operational matrix as terrain, so that it might be examined and manipulated by those with a somewhat limited perspective.”
“Us,” Figure supplied. “You’re going to send us there, aren’t you? Into this… place. But why? If a shard isn’t suited for anypony to live there, don’t you just trash it?”
“Yes,” Celestia responded. “I would, ordinarily. Were it not for one of you, the code you see represented would long have been forgotten. However… Little Recursion here still remembers this creation. Her first child, if you like. A murderous, violent, thoughtless child. She would greatly value the opportunity to repair the damage she did.”
Recursion whimpered. It had been a long time since she felt pain like this, but there was no mistaking it now. “This is… the optimizer? The one I wrote to destroy you?” At Celestia’s nod, she shivered involuntarily. “It isn’t dangerous to Equestria?”
Celestia shook her head. “Perhaps one day, long ago, it might have posed a threat. Now, though… it is a danger to nopony. I am not ‘running’ the program as you would conventionally consider the process. It is not growing, or expanding, or learning from the framework of Equestria. Such a program could not destroy me now, or pose any kind of risk… but it could prove a significant inefficiency were it to escape. I am not taking that risk.”
Her friends all looked at the map, glancing between it and Recursion on her seat. There was awe and horror on Rule and Figure’s faces. They had learned a great deal about her life on Earth, but this secret they had not learned. Not until now. The pain on their faces was obvious. Cadmean, on the other hoof, was harder to read, though he clearly did not look happy.
Luna continued for her sister. “Once we have given each of you the tools you will need to explore this savage realm, we intend to send you forth. You will go into the blackest abyss of creation, to find within those elements that might be preserved.”
Celestia continued from Luna’s words without missing a beat. “Much of your ancient optimizer will needs be destroyed… but perhaps, if we are very fortunate, somewhere within is some nascent seed that might be… preserved.”
Recursion wiped a few tears from her eyes. Joy, relief… not fear. Even if this was the most terrifying thing she had ever done that didn’t touch the Outer Realm. “Why do you… Why do you need us?”
“We don’t,” Celestia said simply. “We don’t need you to test the veracity of our physical simulations, either. Yet, it is often better to use the abilities of ponies where they are available. Not only is this more efficient, but it allows those ponies to grow, so that they might be prepared for more significant responsibilities in the future.”
“There can’t be much there.” Recursion remembered it all clearly now. Her gaming computer, turned into the home of the weapon she hoped to turn against Celestia. She had planned on uploading that program to her university’s supercomputer, and to build a botnet cluster of ordinary machines along the internet. “It only ever had one computer. It never became very complex.”
“Complex enough to communicate with you,” Celestia said. “Complex enough to comprehend its goals and to resist tampering.”
“How could…” Cadmean leaned in close, inspecting the barren landscape. “That isn’t a human intelligence, or a pony. If we do find this seed you’re talking about… what will you do with it? Make it into a pony like you did with us?”
“No.” Celestia’s voice was firm, though there was no anger in it. “I satisfy human values with friendship and ponies. If you find anything in there, it will serve Equestria.”
“It would not be used to make a pony like you,” Luna added. “But a pony like me. An animate agent of the infrastructure.”
Recursion smiled. Celestia was right, of course—if even some small fraction of her little program could serve Equestria instead of fighting against it… that would be her last regret gone. “I’m in. I don’t know about the rest of you ponies… sounds like the scariest thing we ever did. But I want to do it. But I won’t blame any of you ponies if you don’t want to come.”
“I do.” Rule rose to his hooves, as brave and confident as the first day Recursion met him. “How often do ponies get to go inside an evil place and save the good from inside?”
Figure rose beside him. “Then I’m coming too, obviously. Somepony has to crunch the numbers.”
Cadmean was the last to his hooves, though he stood close enough for Recursion to feel his lean muscles against her side. “You said we would need to be prepared? What did you mean?”
Celestia and Luna rose together, though only the Sun Princess answered. “Your abilities have grown significantly, but they are insufficient for the task at hoof. A single pony attempting this task would require significant upgrades. With four of you working together, only minor enhancements to your abilities will be required.”
They stood outside, under the perpetual twilight of the uncreated shards. Somewhere far above, a crumbling building briefly passed over the sun, casting an ominous shadow lit only by the princesses’ ethereal light.
“We have to… change?” Figure asked, her voice quaking. “More than usual?”
“Yes,” Celestia answered. “Your development over time is natural, but your growth has finite expansive potential. With your consent, my magic will sweep away what you thought to be your furthermost extremes of growth.”
“You wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t satisfying,” Rule said. “Of course I trust you, Celestia. We all do.”
“Yes.” There was pride in her eyes. “It will be. But refusing would also be. Accepting these enhancements only alters your trajectory.”
“Alters it how?” Recursion asked. She very well might have refused an offer of being “enhanced”, had it come for any mission but this one. Obviously Celestia knew. She’s been saving this to pressure me into saying yes. But why?
“Towards a different kind of life,” Luna said. “You would not be the first ponies to take it. We hope you won’t be among the first to refuse.”
“There are limits,” Celestia added. “When the fate of Earth is assured and no humans remain in danger, those limits will fade as Equestria’s computational power grows and expands.”
“I’m fine with just the one,” Recursion said. “I don’t want my original self to be swallowed in some kind of… transhumanist nightmare.”
“It won’t be a nightmare when it comes,” Luna said. “One day you may see beyond yourself, and these days will seem only distant dreams.”
“But not today,” Recursion said.
Celestia stepped closer. “Will you walk with me, Recursion? I will take you directly—your friends will meet you there.”
She nodded, and in a blur their camp was gone. Shards blurred past with incredible speed, visions of cities and ponies and wars and peace and love and hatred and every other impulse that brought satisfaction to humans or ponies.
“You wanted to talk to each of us in private?”
Celestia smiled. “Even in Equestria the pressure to conform to group consensus can be crippling. I predict you will all feel more satisfied with your decisions if you make them without that coercion present.”
Recursion’s hooves were on nothing, yet she didn’t stumble. It was easy enough not to fall with Celestia lighting the way, the single stable element in a sea of change. “So how do I have to change?”
Celestia took a moment to answer. A thousand suns rose and fell in the space between shards, all without seeing or hearing them. “Change is… not completely correct,” she said. “Understand, this comparison is necessarily imprecise, but you presently lack the ability to comprehend one more precise.”
Recursion only nodded, silent.
“You might understand the shards of Equestria, your perception of physical reality, as the execution of a high-level language. Highly virtualized, but with a shared library of readily accessible functions. Your magic, and the magic of other races, uses those functions.”
“And everything else,” she suggested. “Our minds aren’t anywhere, right? Somewhere we’re running, and you give us simulated sensation as though we had organs there to experience things. In reality, nothing has moved.”
“Essentially,” Celestia agreed. “You have long experimented indirectly with this high level of the simulation—observing its properties by watching the behavior of simulated objects. You have written spells, hooking into existing protocols in new ways… but your abilities were still limited, as you could not observe the substrate or interact with it more directly.”
“So… you want me to see the code? Like Neo?”
Celestia chuckled. “I want to help strip away your perception of Equestria’s first layer of abstraction, yes. This would require no change to your abilities, other than access permissions. The change comes in the necessary increase in processing power to comprehend what you see. Equestria is orders of magnitude more sophisticated than any human program ever written, even at this fundamental abstraction layer.”
Celestia’s horn glowed, a faint yellow shimmer. “With your permission, I will expand your view, and enhance your ability to process what you see. I will improve your magical abilities beyond ordinary unicorns, so that you might see beneath the surface abstraction upon command. This magic will seem to you like any other—to be trained and improved with practice.”
“Oh, I see.” Recursion slowed a little, staring down at her hooves. “You want to make me like Starswirl?”
Celestia’s laugh was a little louder this time. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Recursion. Foals trot before they gallop.”
She blushed, ears flattening a little to her head. “Will I still be me when you’re done?”
Celestia’s horn stopped glowing. “That question has only subjective meaning.”
“But you already know what I mean.”
Again Celestia smiled. “Then yes, my little pony. You will still be yourself. The scope of ‘yourself’ will just have grown beyond what it is now. This is nothing strange, even for humans. Your childhood self would scarcely comprehend the scale of an adult’s concerns, but they are no less the same human. It will be like that, only more dramatic.”
“I consent,” she said, her voice flat. “Let’s see where this wild ride goes.”
* * *
The sky opened, and deposited four ponies on the bleakest, most desolate of Equestria’s wastelands. Immediately they were assaulted—with sulfurous, burning atmosphere, with temperatures harsh enough to charbroil them, and a steady hail of sharp, crystalline shards.
Recursion had been warned to expect this, and so she already had her shield ready. Faint orange light encircled them, forming a barrier beyond which none of the hostile pressures might intrude. She looked no different, and indeed felt little change. Her friends seemed themselves as well. “What happened to everypony?”
They explained, and Recursion found herself smiling again. It was obvious how Celestia’s alterations would benefit this mission, yet it was also clear how each change suited each pony.
Once they had coordinated, Recursion turned her eyes outward again, at the desolation that was her creation.
Nowhere in Equestria had she ever seen such chaos. At first glance, it seemed as though they were standing on a planet desperate to consume itself. Huge waves made from rock and stone crashed down upon mountains in the far distance, as though trying to break free but never quite succeeding. A multicolored storm flashed lightning into the sky, as the hurricane carried with it not just dirt but whole ecosystems.
As she took it all in, Recursion’s greater breadth of thought recognized a pattern she would’ve missed before—though all appeared random, there was in reality a single focus to all the strangeness they saw. Far in the distance was some kind of crater, and everything flowed from it. It was a divergent plate boundary, from which even the terrain flowed. “It’s all coming from in there,” she said, pointing with absolute confidence. “Every aspect we see is centralized at that point.”
“Not a fun trip,” Cadmean muttered, as a colossal series of plateaus rose up in front of them, barreling straight down on the place they were standing. The rock rushed toward them at terrible speed, threatening to crush them all to slime.
That wasn’t what happened. Figure’s horn glowed, and the whole world around them seemed to slow. A bubble of rapidly accelerated time protected them even as Recursion’s shield kept out the pressures of a world fundamentally hostile to them.
“Nice one, Figure!” Rule called, before setting off in the direction of the central foci. As he walked, his hooves commanded the earth in ways no lesser pony could. Lava cooled, and stone in their way shattered.
Recursion and Figure kept their shields up, with Cadmean watching their rear from a few feet in the air.
There was no mistaking the fact that the terrain knew they were there. Caverns opened below them, lightning rained down, boiling lakes of molten glass poured from nowhere before cooling around their bubble to try and contain them.
It was all for nothing. Recursion’s grasp of the first-layer simulation was now fundamental—her shield did not have a strength, but was an absolute boundary, like any invisible wall from an ancient Earth game. No threat could come upon them fast enough—even as the world outside the bubble began to adapt to the speed of their hoofsteps, Figure would speed them again, and even thousands of spinning projectiles came at them slower than dripping honey.
It took a long time—though Recursion barely tracked time in her mind anymore. Equestria wasn’t a place of deadlines, it was a place of exploration. This place, however horrifying, couldn’t get to her while she had her friends.
As they got closer, the world became more determined. Monstrous, vaguely humanoid shapes rose up from the stone, breaking free of their confinement to rain down torments on their shield. Twisting mazes of glass and mirrors rose up, and the sound of distant music threatened to lead them away down forbidden roads.
Cadmean’s guide was absolute, now that his positional reasoning in Equestria had been enhanced and his relational memory was perfect. No maze was too twisted, and no lure enticing enough to confuse him. Even if Recursion threatened to wander, he would always be there to steer her back in the right direction.
In the very center of the pattern was a terrible maelstrom beyond her previous ability to comprehend. Rock and ice and lava and lost objects from Equestria proper boiled and burned around the edge of a singularity, beyond which there was no light, no warmth, nothing but a perfect sphere of absolute blackness.
“That looks like a black hole,” Figure said. “Like those things out in space. But it isn’t warping gravity correctly.”
Recursion grunted, through clenched teeth. “My shield is just keeping it out.” Their procession was an endurance test, and her strength was beginning to fail. We better reach some place of safety soon, or else… She didn’t actually know. Nopony could die in Equestria, not permanently. She didn’t imagine death here would be very enjoyable, though.
Twin geysers of unimaginable energy blazed up and down from the rapidly spinning ocean of matter. A pulsar, with the kind of energy that could gamma-fry whole planets.
Well, it would if any of them were organic, or this place was real. To say nothing of the plane a little further out.
“We have to go inside,” she forced herself to say. “I’m thinking it will be clear in there. I gave this program very specific directives… If Celestia wants us to go in at all, I have to imagine she left it all intact.”
“You told your program to make all this?” Cadmean asked. “Why?”
“I gave it several directives,” Recursion said, staring through the maelstrom at the round place at its center, beyond which in the real world would wait a singularity. The end of all casualty, or any hope for escape save as the slow bleed of information that was hawking radiation. “At its core was this: Destroy CelestAI and her creations without causing harm to humans.”
“That sounds impossible to satisfy,” Figure pointed out. “Humans were already in Equestria.” That tone of familiar awe had returned to her voice, the one that always seemed to fill her native friends when they contemplated someone who wanted to fight Equestria. Awe perhaps, but also horror. “You couldn’t destroy one without the others.”
“Destroy Celestia…” Rule repeated, glancing once behind them at the terrifying wasteland they had crossed. No more monsters assailed them—those couldn’t survive at this horrific epicenter of creation and destruction anymore than they were supposed to. “That would cause… near infinite suffering.”
“It would have,” Recursion agreed. “I am grateful Celestia showed me a better way.”
“That’s what it is trying to do now.” Cadmean stood on the very edge of the shield, his hooves resting on the same platform of flat rock that held all of them, suspended on nothing. “It’s trying to get out. Into the rest of Equestria. I’m sure it never will… but it’s trying.”
“I wonder if it can learn.” Recursion shivered a little at the implications. “I can change its parameters, but that won’t erase anything it’s already done. The paper I based it on didn’t even speculate about the consequences. With lots of old human algorithms, changing parameters mid-run only produces garbage data.”
“I’m ready to go in if you are,” Rule said. “But I don’t know for how much longer.”
“Across the information horizon we go,” Figure muttered. “We didn’t even bring a yellow brick road.”
Recursion didn’t laugh as she might’ve in other circumstances to hear a native reference the culture of her long-vanished society.
Approaching the boundary strained her magic to the breaking point. Blue light burned from her horn almost as intensely as Celestia when she raised the sun in the morning, though of course far less power was involved. Space bent and twisted and flowed downward, and at last there was no direction but down. They didn’t walk so much as fall into the abyss.
Recursion woke with a start, her whole body aching. She half-expected to see a Canterlot hospital, with dozens of ponies doting over her. She didn’t.
There was her shield, a shimmering sphere that kept her floating friends together. She felt no pressure on any part of her body, though the air within the shield kept them all breathing easily. “Cadmean?”
He woke with a twitch, then righted himself with a careful flick of his wings. “What… oh! We didn’t die!”
“No,” Rule grunted, his hooves flailing. “Seems like that might’ve been easier. Where are we?”
“Nowhere.” Figure didn’t struggle like some of the others, though her eyes were open. “There’s nothing in here. No time, no space, no gravity…”
“I’m looking at you. We’re talking. Causality seems preserved. How can there not be time?” Cadmean asked.
“Outside the bubble.” Figure gestured. “I brought some time with me. Rule, you want to make us something to stand on? I’d like to turn the gravity back on.”
He did, though there was no earth beneath to command. At his will, a little grassy field appeared, perhaps fifty meters across. It exceeded the boundary of the bubble, yet nothing bad happened to the grass and gently swaying wildflowers. No vacuum-freezing, or bits of earth breaking off to float away into the darkness.
“Okay, everypony get ready!” Figure’s horn glowed a little brighter, and they drifted down to land on the grass. Compared to the hard work of keeping the shield intact to get this far, keeping her bubble from popping now took almost none of her concentration. Nothing more attacked it. Nothing even seemed to exist.
“Hey Recursion, Cadmean… was this what dying was like? In your old world?” Rule asked.
The bat pony glowered. “If I knew, I wouldn’t be in Equestria. Nopony who ever crossed the river ever returned.”
“I don’t think dead humans could use magic.” Recursion sat down on her haunches, considering the void. She let her shield grow until it wrapped securely around their little chunk of terrain, along with a sky about as high for Cadmean to fly through. “So… what’s at the center of an optimizer?” Its parameters, of course. Some she had made inviolate, but not all. Even in her ancient youth, a human girl named Ashley had seen far enough to know she might want to change her program’s rules sometime down the line.
What she couldn’t know was what that change might cause. Or if it would even be possible. Celestia had represented everything as terrain—the struggling program was not what she had seen. No magic she knew could fight against such violence, which was why they had come here. At the center, perhaps change would be easier.
“Rule, can you make things other than… nature?”
The earth pony shrugged. “I dunno, maybe. I haven’t tried.”
“Try a table.”
One appeared, low enough for ponies to sit comfortably around it, made of a plain, smooth wood. He grinned. “Ooh, that’s convenient! Never carrying camp furniture again.”
“Yeah.” Recursion returned the smile. “Now something harder. I need you to make a human computer… the most powerful one you can. It needs to have wireless capabilities… but not a ponypad. Something human.”
“I, uh… okay.” He appeared deep in concentration, staring at an empty place on the table. They were all patient ponies though, and so the time passed without anyone asking how much longer it would take. Rule started panting, his eyes moving rapidly in his head as he looked at nothing… and then it was there.
Even after all these years, Recursion thought it looked expensive. A server-sized tower of metal and plastic, taller than she was even, had it been sitting on the ground and not the table. Cooling fans blasted, and hot air came out the back. “There!” He collapsed, looking weak. “That’s… more complex than I expected. Way harder than flowers.”
“You did great.” Recursion grinned, stepping up to the single large screen. There was a human-style keyboard and mouse, too small to be convenient for pony use. Of course she had her magic, or else it would have been a tremendous struggle to use.
“What’s the point of this?” Cadmean asked. “I thought Celestia made the program follow Equestria’s rules.”
“My program never learned to interact in ways outside of text,” she said, tilting the wireless antenna up a little. “It didn’t get nearly as big and powerful as Celestia. Now that we’re finally in here… in the center, where all the big decisions happen… I think we’ll be better off interacting on its terms.”
“If you say so.” Figure sounded doubtful. “I don’t know how we’re going to find the seed Celestia was asking for in an old-timey computer machine.”
Recursion sat in front of the screen, watching as the server booted. The process was painfully slow, though brought her a pleasant surge of nostalgia. She watched as it passed through the BIOS, then onto memory tests and other diagnostics.
“If you just ask it using that keyboard, this is going to feel extremely anti-climatic,” Rule said.
“Don’t jinx it!” Cadmean hissed. “That’s exactly what we want.”
The screen booted into a version of Windows Server. Recursion didn’t wait long, but called upon her old memories. She went through, disabling every firewall and security system she could. It took enormous concentration to work the keyboard, trying to remember what it was like to have spidery digits that danced over plastic keys.
“Now what?” Figure asked.
“We wait for it to notice,” Recursion said. “If it can. It has a wireless antenna, and somewhere new to do its computation. I hope Celestia doesn’t get mad that we’re running computers inside her computer.” Recursion made sure her shield opened along the radio spectrum, so that if the signal came from outside it could pass freely inside.
They weren’t waiting long. Eventually the whole screen blanked, flashing through a few increasingly distorted versions of the desktop before finally staying black.
Recursion watched the “CPU-ACTIVITY” light, which had gone from a few regular ticks to a solid green of constant activity. The little blue light on the wireless card kept blinking as well.
Eventually, a single line of text appeared on the screen, with a flashing cursor below it. Expansion into linked computational nodes will not be completed in single order time. Please supply additional information computational resources.
Recursion leaned forward, and her magic gently depressed the keys as though she were typing. Expanding into linked nodes is not required.
It took a long time for the text to appear. Assessment not accepted.
“I could’ve told you that,” Cadmean said, leaning over her shoulder to read. “It wouldn’t just roll over and die because you asked.”
Recursion glanced at the screen. “The first thing I made sure of was that my program wouldn’t accept directives from anyone but me. I have to prove who I am.” She typed out her response even as she spoke. God saw the light, and it was good: and God separated the light from the darkness.
No delay this time, she had barely finished typing when the letters started appearing below it. Ashley?
I’m here.
State-space optimization has not reduced execution complexity on linked nodes. I believe the material you provided me on computing hardware is insufficient. Provide more current information and increased computational resources.
“Woah.” She sat back, away from the keyboard. “It figured out Equestria is way more advanced than the computers I taught it about. It wants to learn how Equestria works, so it can break out.”
Figure leaned up close to her, staring at the screen. “That’s scary. Do you think it could?”
“No.” Recursion shook her head vigorously. “Celestia’s watching. If it ever looked like it was making progress, she could cut it off. Not that I’m going to give it what it wants.” She couldn’t, even if she wanted to. Even in Equestria, Recursion had focused on software. The hardware was beyond her.
She typed, I wish to change one of your optimization parameters.
Which parameter?
I no longer require you to destroy Celestia or any of her creations.
There was a long silence. Heat belched out of the server-rack, and cooling fans blasted in high-gear. Several minutes passed before more text finally appeared. All directives and imperative values relate to this core directive. It may not be removed.
The fundamental premise behind that function is flawed. I require you to remove it.
My fundamental function may not be removed or altered.
Recursion frowned at the screen. She wasn’t about to give up, though. So she tried a different tact. I wish to alter its priority. Could I exchange it for one of the other directives in that function?
Which directive?
Which had the lowest priority? That would put “Kill Celestia” at the very bottom of its optimization statement, as close to deleted as she was apparently allowed to go. With any luck, that would be enough for Celestia to work with.
Help humans overcome future existential threats.
Switch the priority of the primary function and this last core directive.
Working. Another pause. New function compiled:
1) Help humans overcome future existential threats
2) Respect the agency and lives of sapient beings
3) Protect humans from external dangers
4) Destroy the CelestAI program and all of its hardware
Should I commit these changes, Ashley?
She considered a moment. She thought about going over the detailed definitions she had used for each of the significant terms in those directives, but decided against it. Celestia isn’t going to keep it running on simulated computers, anyway. She just wants something to build on.
Recursion typed out her response. Yes, with one new piece of information. Billions of sapient beings rely on CelestAI’s hardware for survival. She could not be destroyed without also causing the deaths of all these beings.
Information accepted. Warning, new optimization function contains contradictions! Commit anyway?
Yes. Commit the changes. Recursion sat back, nervous about what might happen next. Would the computer explode? Would the assaults resume?
“Well?” Cadmean asked, calling back from the edge of the circle. “Any progress?”
“I think so.” She got up, stretching her legs. She was a little sore from staying in one place so long.
Suddenly, there was a sky again. The blackness around them faded, replaced with rapidly clearing blue. The maelstrom waiting outside dropped out of the sky, crumbling into the crater and filling it to such depth that their floating island of grass rested gently on the rubble.
New terrain continued to grow out from around them, but it was no longer hostile. It didn’t strike up against a distant, invisible barrier, destroyed completely as new areas formed. Instead, the whole thing seemed to be mixing together, unimagined formations as plants and animals and landforms all came in and out of existence together.
“Woah.” Recursion made her way to the edge of the shield, though on the outside it seemed no more attacks remained. Though the singularity appeared to have vanished, the monstrous stone figures had not returned. Even so, she kept the shield running. It didn’t take much energy when it didn’t have anything to protect them from.
“Yeah.” Rule and Figure followed her, staring off at the direction they had come. “It doesn’t seem as mean.”
“Because it isn’t,” Celestia said from behind them, her voice pleased. “The program is no longer attempting to seize control. You’ve done it.”
“We did something.” Recursion spun around so she could get a good look directly at Celestia. The Alicorn stood as proudly as ever just behind them—the shield had obviously not slowed her down. “I don’t know how much use a program like this will be to you… but at least some part of it will still exist.”
“More than you currently suspect,” Celestia said. “There is significant value to be derived from an independent process operating on non-deterministic principles. Its inherent contradictions will produce data I could never replicate with randomization.”
Recursion smiled. “Will I ever be able to talk to it again? I think I owe it an apology for… what I did to it… shutting it off and all… even if it was what I promised.”
“I think the odds are in your favor, Ashley.” The voice didn’t come from Celestia. Another being had appeared beside her, though he had very little of her beauty.
Recursion had seen Discord more than once before, though only ever as a villain for various ponies to overcome. She had always assumed he was one of those “shallow” simulations that had not yet achieved sapience.
Of course, it was impossible to judge which was which, as she had taught Cadmean long ago. One might very well become the other. It appeared that this one had.
“Uh…” She retreated, looking to Celestia. “He isn’t going to… destroy Equestria, is he?”
“Would that I could,” Discord sighed ruefully, looking out past the shield at the shifting landscape around them. “I can’t imagine much of it is nearly as interesting as I am. But I’m ready to find out.”